“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts spanning July through December 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents an enormous variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Peter has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty-year project on Heine and the music his poetry continues to inspire.
“Seas, Birds and Trees,” to be presented on Heine’s 228th birthday, is an evocative potpourri of works by eleven composers, among them Massachusetts residents Clifton “Jerry” Noble, David Kidwell, John Craig Cooper and Gregory Hayes.
The ocean was a major recurring theme in Heine’s poetry, particularly the shore and islands of the cold and stormy North Sea, where he spent several holidays in his twenties. The sea’s bleak beauty haunted Heine the rest of his life, inspiring him to write poems that combine rich descriptions of the natural scene with fanciful and ironic tales and poignant love-songs. Those sea poems in turn have inspired much of this concert’s music, which consists of seven solo songs with piano, a suite for piano four-hands, and five pieces for one or two voices and various combinations of instruments. Pianist Brenda Moore Miller will accompany Peter on the solo songs, and will collaborate with Clifton J. Noble on the piano four-hands suite. Noble will also accompany the pieces with additional musicians. Mezzo-soprano Justina Golden will join in two vocal duets, and the following instrumentalists will each play in two songs: clarinetist Hannah Berube, cellist Mark Fraser, hornist Jean Jeffries, violinist Colleen Jennings, and flutist Nina Wurgaft.
Earlier concerts in the series:
“The Noble Heine,” Sunday, July 6, showcased music by local pianist and composer Clifton J. Noble, Jr., including his 2016 song cycle written in tribute to Robert Schumann, and four new works composed for the vocal sextet Cantabile, of which Peter is a member.
“The Parting Summer,” Saturday, Sept. 13, featured music by pianist and composer Kaeza Fearn, presently of Cape Cod, featuring her 2009 song cycle of the same name, sung by Peter with pianist Monica Jakuc Leverett, plus a few of Kaeza’s piano works.
"Heinrich Heine Far and Near," Sunday, October 26, presented sixteen songs, several in English translation, by thirteen composers from Germany, Canada, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts, rainging widely in style, mood, and tonality. Peter was joined by mezzo-soprano and guitarist Justina Golden, pianist and guitarist Clifton J. Noble, Jr., and soprano Junko Watanabe.
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